How to find out the best exchange rates when sending money to India

I have been in the US for 7 years now and would have send money to Indian on numerous occasions, be it for family maintenance or for some other purposes. Never thought too much about it and I have been a regular user of money2india services offered by ICICI bank. Never had any major issues with Money2india, however as years progressed, my dissatisfaction slowly grew and i always felt that the exchange rate was always little less than the market rate, but never gave it a serious thought.

One day it struck me that why don't I just find spend some time on the world wide web and find out who are the other providers and what kind of rates they provide. It was a real eye opener for me that they are at least a handful of providers (5-6 at least) and each of them offer different rates on a daily basis. If you are going to be like me, there is good chance that your bank may take advantage of your laziness. Majority of the users don't have the time to search and compare the rates of all these providers, they just stick with one provider .

Now after doing my research I have found SBI (no kidding, the old age licence raj nationalised monolith) to be the best in terms of rates and service. However the rates fluctuates and on a given day and ICICI or Times Money could be better. To help of my fellow NRI i also created a portal nrispot.com and built in a page, where you can not only find all the providers but also compare their exchanges rates / fees for sending money to India. However I would like to clearly state that please don't rely solely on my for the information, and my sincere advice you to do your own checks on the rates. A couple of minutes on checking the rates could end up as additional money for loved ones